


Occupational Hazards

by bluecanary101



Category: Project Nemesis Series - Brendan Reichs
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Canon-Typical Violence, First Meetings, Gen, Medical Procedures, but not really its the roboty kind, canon typical brazen disregard for personal safety or the concept of mortality, hard sci-fi this is not folks, written by someone who knows exactly jack shit about computers or anatomy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:06:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28488780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecanary101/pseuds/bluecanary101
Summary: Noah gets his ass kicked on the job and needs some emergency repairs. This should just be a mildly embarrassing blip in his day, but it spirals into much more than that.Turns out the deadly toxin threatening to wreck all his cybernetics is just the beginning of his problems.
Relationships: Noah Livingston & Thomas "Tack" Russo & Min Wilder
Comments: 6
Kudos: 2





	Occupational Hazards

**Author's Note:**

> hey remember me? i wrote a fic over a year ago? anyway heres...the opposite of that

Noah considered Rose Valenti to be one of the most hazardous parts of his job. Which was a shame, he really liked Rose. She was a dick on and off work, but she was also one of the most consistently competent people he knew. He appreciated her take no shit, waste no time attitude.

But the nature of their jobs meant that they were usually in conflict. She worked security for Chrysalis Co., he was a mercenary for hire. Led to some issues.

Tonight was one of those fun little clashes. Chrysalis Co. had some shit in a warehouse that an anonymous competitor wanted, Noah’s team was supposed to steal it and hand it off. The client had been evasive and Noah never really paid attention to the details of these things anyway. He’d long since stopped caring.

Maybe he should have paid slightly more attention this time, because things went bad fast. No one knew that Rose Valenti was personally guarding this mystery cargo along with 20 of Chrysalis Co.’s best and some serious firepower. Noah was going yell at someone for this gap in their intel at some point, but first he had to deal with the ensuing firefight.

He and Leah improvised a laughably simple bait and switch. She took off with the real goods, which turned out to just be a fucking flash drive, while the rest of the team took the container and it’s tracking chip in the opposite direction.

All this for a couple gigabytes of the Latest Innovation. Jesus fucking Christ. And who puts the tracker on the _case_ , not the thing inside it? Sometimes Noah seriously regretted his career choices, but at least he wasn’t working for a tech company.

Noah’s job was to play the noble sacrifice. He stayed behind and tried to hold Rose and her friends off. Ham it up, make sure the bait looked legitimate. He couldn’t do much, but he bought the rest of them a little time before Rose left him for dead in the rubble of the warehouse.

Make no mistake, this was not a selfless act. If Noah died here, which was likely, the Program would just drag his ass back to life. The rest of his team didn’t have the right hardware for necromancy, so he was the idiot who has to stay behind.

He stayed still in the rubble, playing dead until Rose’s stragglers cleared away. If Rose had hung around for a few more minutes he might not have to pretend, as the flashing warnings scrolling in front of his closed eyes reminded him. Based on the length of the list he gave himself about three hours left to live.

Plenty of time. Too much time, maybe. He wondered if he could turn off his sleep suppressants and get a nap in before he kicked the bucket. Dying and being brought back might even spare him the suppressant headache when he woke up.

But these days he couldn’t even die in peace. A message flashed over his vision, direct from the Program. _Your part is over. Find a secluded area for extraction._

He considered ignoring it. Fuck the Program, it could hack some rescue drones to pick his corpse out of the rubble, no problem. But if Chrysalis Co. employees got to him before it did he might actually stay dead. So he checked the area one more time, wiggled out from under the support beam that fell on top of him, and hauled himself begrudgingly to his feet.

At least his legs and spine were intact this time. It sucked trying to move without them.

Except for one shallow cut to his organic left forearm, courtesy of Rose, all his injuries were to his cybernetics. They only registered as a slowed pace and the list of damages. He popped his right shoulder back into place as he staggered out into the street, stomped until the pressure sensors in his legs kicked back on, and otherwise ignored the state of his meat bag.

Metal bag? It was mostly metal, plastic, and silicone at this point. Whatever.

 _How are the others?_ he asked the Program as he stumbled down the street. He could ask them directly though their comm links, but he had a feeling they were busy.

_Managing._

_Leah?_

_Leah Halpern has reached a safe area and is investigating the contents of the hard drive._

That was a mild surprise. This job was a means to secure funds, not part of the Program’s wider plan, so it was about as invested in the outcome as Noah was. The surprisingly beefy security must have peaked its interest.

Noah didn’t ask, it didn’t like for him to. It was clear from the beginning of their working relationship that Noah was on a strictly need to know basis.

He was 16 when he signed onto its mission. Fresh off the discovery that his therapist was experimenting on him his whole life, a nervous fucking wreck and in need of direction. The Program had offered him that direction. It would keep the revival technology the aforementioned therapist had stuck in him safe and out of the hands of the people Project Nemesis built it for. And in return he gave it everything.

Five years later he was learning to regret their arrangement. But it was too fucking late to stop now.

All things considering this was an okay night for him. Sure, he got the shit kicked out of him, but any job that he could walk away from was a success in his book.

He finally found a good dead-end alley to die in when another status alert flared at him. _Cybertoxin P-T9 detected, probable nanobot contamination._

Shit. He thumbed at the cut, probably the contamination point. Nanobots could only get into cybernetics though a specialized injection port or the organic blood steam, and he couldn’t remember any toxic injections lately.

Remember that part about Rose being competent? Yeah. Unluckily for him, that competence was often channeled into trying to kill him.

The Program was going to be so smug about this. It had bugged Noah to replace his left arm for years.

Speak of the devil. A message from the Program popped up just seconds after the warning. _The contamination will corrupt our link, making extraction and repairs impossible,_ it said.

_I’ll stay here._

_You misunderstand. The virus contained in the cybertoxin can spread through many different channels, including our link. Both the virus and toxin must be removed before repairs are attempted._

Fuuuck _. Any suggestions, then?_

The program sent him directions to the nearest mechanic’s shop, some random independent place in upper Ridgeline, and then abruptly shut off their link. In Program speak that translated to “go fuck yourself, you’re on your own.”

Noah scowled and began the long, limping trek.

Ridgeline Repairs was stuck awkwardly on the side of a high rise that itself was stuck awkwardly on the side of the mountain that Ridgeline clung to. He hated Fire Lake's topography in general, but Ridgeline in particular was a nightmare to trek through. To get there he had to stagger up steep ground level streets and then several levels of narrow, rickety open air skywalks that set his teeth on edge.

The P-T9 worked fast, and he had plenty of cybernetics for it to fuck with. Breathing got difficult, occasionally a limb would spasm, his sense of balance faded in and out. He probably looked drunk on top of looking like a horror show. The few people on the street at this time of night gave him a wide berth. Halfway through the journey his app overlay was glitching out so much he had to dismiss it. Which meant no comms or maps, he just barely memorized the shop’s address before things became inoperable.

If the virus got into his pacemaker he’d be fucked, but it didn't and he managed to get to the place alive. It was closed. It also had piss poor security, no alarms to trip or anything when he wrenched the embarrassingly old world lock out of the door. At least, none he could hear, his shorting hearing enhancements made everything sound muffled.

He stumbled to an operating table in the back and started fumbling for tools. This endeavor was hindered by the fact that his right arm was spasming uncontrollably now.

Any mercenary worth a shit knew how to repair their own cybernetics in a pinch. Cybertoxins were well out of Noah’s mechanical experience, but he was pretty sure a backup processor could be a temporary fix. And if that didn’t work, he wasn’t worried. The Program was probably exaggerating when it said it couldn’t fix him with cybertoxin in his system. It had brought him back from much worse, and he was too much of an asset to let die.

If the Program could find another sucker willing to die for it as often as he did, more power to it. Until then he was all it had.

He finally found a beat-up cybernetics operations chip in a pile of scrap. An older model, but serviceable. He could replace his current one to delay the virus’s progress, and then it was just a getting the virus out of him. That would be…more complicated. But he could either figure it out or die trying.

It would fucking help if his right hand would cooperate. It almost smashed the chip twice, and then dropped the screwdriver as he tried to open the panel on the back of his neck that hid his cybernetic processors. Scraping together the coordination to hook up the chip might be a problem.

Cybertoxin or no, it was pretty embarrassing that he didn’t notice the people moving around upstairs until a door opened, lights flashed on, and people were shouting at him.

Instinct took over and he tried to dive for cover. _Tried_ being the key word here, because he basically just fell behind the operating table.

“You’re cornered, asshole!” came a girl’s voice.

She was right. He was stuck. Unless he wanted to make a run for the window, but he’d really rather not. Death by heights was one of his least favorite ways to go.

Usually he could take an a few presumed civilians easily, but there was the whole dying thing to worry about. Really limited his options here. He sighed heavily. This would require diplomacy.

“I need repairs,” he croaked. “I’m sorry for breaking in, but I got hit with a cybertoxin, desperate measures. I’ll pay for everything.”

Yeah, fuck it, that was all he could come up with.

There was a beat of silence. “Come out with your hands up,” said a guy.

Noah eased into standing, slowly, spazzing and twitching the whole way. There were just the two of them, both with blasters pointed right at his face. The guy’s eyes widened and the girl lowered her blaster slightly as they took him in.

Definitely civilians then.

They glanced at each other. “Don’t make any sudden moves,” said the guy, lowering his blaster and advancing on him cautiously. The girl steadied her aim. Smart or her.

“Kinda hard not to right now,” Noah grumbled. His left leg was starting to give him trouble now too, he had to prop himself on the operation table.

The guy, hopefully a mechanic, directed Noah to clamber up onto it. He really thought it would be harder to get to this point, but he wasn’t going to complain. “What the fuck happened?” he asked.

“My cat scratched me.

The maybe-hopefully mechanic snorted humorlessly. “Well, your cat just got you one hell of a repair bill.”

“I can pay,” he repeated.

Something weird happened with his face, but he nodded. “Okay. Cybertoxin first, and then I can get the rest of you back in order.” Noah didn’t bother telling him that was unnecessary. He didn't plan to stick around long. “I’ll need to get you connected to a machine for this, where are your ports?”

“It’s a cybertoxin, it can spread to your computers.”

He leveled an unimpressed look at him. “This is a mechanic’s shop. I’ve got firewalls.”

“Uh, right. Standard neck hatch.” He winced as the mechanic opened the panel on the back of his neck and plugged a cable from the operation table into the port there. It didn’t feel like anything, he just always hated it. A holoscreen popped up over the rack of tools Noah had been rummaging through earlier, displaying all of Noah’s internal information for the mechanic to scrutinize.

“Christ,” the mechanic breathed. Noah couldn’t tell whether he was reacting to the toxin levels displayed in flashing red or Noah’s bio-tech metrics in general. He couldn’t blame him even if it was the latter, his hardware was a lot for civilians.

His gaze caught on the _73%_ next to a diagram of all his cybernetics and he wrenched his eyes down.

“Wow, someone really wants you dead,” the mechanic said mildly.

“I’m aware,” Noah gritted out, staring hard at the pealing linoleum floor.

“This shit isn’t even legal.”

“Can you just get it out of me, please?”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re lucky, I’m not really a software guy, but I got hold of some anti-virus programs a few weeks ago. This should be a quick fix.”

He’d lost track of the girl and when she spoke up it was from closer than he was expecting. “What’s your name?” she asked. They all politely ignored how hard he flinched.

“Leighton,” he said. Up close she looked vaguely familiar, but Noah couldn’t place where he might’ve seen her before.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Min, he’s Tack.”

Before Noah could say anything back a flash of pain shot down his spine like he was electrocuted. He doubled over, gasping.

“Sorry. Didn’t realize that would hurt. I’ve never actually treated a cybertoxin before,” Tack said, wincing. Way to boost Noah’s confidence.

“That’s some fucking tech you’ve got,” Min said, with the tone of someone having casual conversation over brunch.

“Are you a luddite or something?”

She looked mildly offended. “You’ve just got me beat, is all. I’m 66%.”

She didn’t look it, no external cybernetics to be seen. If she kept up with her skin grafts that meant the operations probably weren’t by choice. They also had that in common. “I’m sorry.”

She smiled thinly. God, she _really_ looked familiar. Maybe he knew her from school. But then how would she end up in some random mechanic’s shop in Ridgeline?

Not that he was in any position to judge.

He didn’t have a lot of time to dwell on it because Tack tapped something on the screen that made Noah’s head spin. The room tilted and he would have tumbled straight off the table if it weren’t for Min catching him and settling him back. He wondered if her entire job was to make small talk and catch people when Tack laid them out with no warning.

“Okay, this next bit is going to suck,” Tack said, as if murdering his sense of balance didn’t already suck. But in the next second he turned out to be correct. The electric feeling returned, shooting down every artificial nerve ending he had. So, most of them.

Noah let out a strangled gasp and gripped the edges of the operation table. “Are you trying make it kill me faster?” he choked out.

“The only way to get this shit out is to burn it out.”

Noah swore. All at once the feeling disappeared, leaving him dazed and slightly numb, gasping for air.

“You good?” Tack asked, aggravatingly flippant for Noah’s tastes.

“Motherfucker.”

“A little gratitude would be nice.” He tapped a few more buttons and then said, “Okay, I’m going to need to reboot your system.”

 _Fuck_. “I can’t, I need-”

“A life support system, yeah, I can see that. I’ve got one. Min, can you-?”

“On it.” She rushed off somewhere.

Noah lolled his head to look at Tack properly. It was still hard getting his eyes to focus. “I meant I need my brain mods. Most of them will reset when I reboot.” Although he did also need a life support system, with the artificial lungs and the pacemaker and all. This was why Tack was the mechanic and Noah was the mercenary.

Tack frowned and scrolled through what Noah assumed was a list of his brain mods before saying. “No you don’t, none of these are essential. You can do without _Eagle Eyes 360 by Razor Tech TM _for the five seconds it takes to reconfigure.”

“It’s my sleep suppressant. If it goes down for more than a minute I’m going to crash.”

Tack turned his glower on Noah. “How long has it been on?”

About three months, but he probably shouldn’t tell a mechanic that. The recommended limit was a week tops. “Long enough where I’ll crash,” he said instead, “and I don’t think either of us wants me to go comatose on your table.”

“You should have thought about that before you broke in.”

Fair point. “Just don’t reboot me, I can do it back at my base.”

“Hell no. I literally can’t let you to leave like this, my license could get revoked.”

If Noah could roll his eyes without vomiting, he would. Out of all the mechanics in the goddamned city, he had to go to the _one_ who actually gave a shit about the Cybernetic Repairmen Guild's code of ethics. “I promise I won’t say anything.”

Min spoke up as she rolled the life support system in from the back of the shop. “Tons of patients have stayed here overnight, you’ll be fine. We’ve got a room in the back.”

“ _Fuck no_.”

Tack huffed, impatient. “Just call someone once all your shit is back online.”

“Or you could give us their contact information, and we’ll call them,” Min suggested. That was an even worse option. Most of his team were wanted criminals.

This was why he hated repairs, especially the emergency ones. But he didn’t exactly have a lot of options.

He could stay awake long enough to call someone afterward. Probably.

“Okay, fine. Do it.”

Tack grumbled something that sounded like “I was gonna anyway” and turned back to his holoscreens to start up the rebooting process. Min put the ventilator over his face, and in the next second everything went black.

Rebooting was horrible. 73% cybernetic meant he stayed conscious, but he could still feel as every individual component of him shut down. Four out of five senses, most of his nerve endings, and a huge chunk of his body just _gone_. Completely inaccessible. Like he was locked in a small dark room and the entire rest of the world no longer existed.

It was far too similar to dying for his tastes. But at least then he didn’t remember the time he spent under. He felt every single second of a reboot.

Then everything blinked back to life.

“Can you flex your hand for me?” Tack asked.

Noah did.

“Breath in and out, slowly.”

He did.

“Okay, try saying something.”

“Okay.”

“Everything feel normal?”

He nodded, but he didn’t really. He felt hazy. Disconnected.

“You said you wanted to call someone to pick you up, right?” Min reminded him.

Right. He had to call someone. Aiko, probably. But navigating his interface was suddenly the most difficult thing in the world, the overlay seemed like a gigantic maze he couldn’t hope to find his way through. And where the fuck did he know her from? He knew he did.

“You alright?” she asked, drifting a little closer.

“How do I know you?”

If she gave an answer, he never heard it.

\---

Noah woke up feeling like shit.

This was the only way he ever woke up, nowadays. Side effect of sleep suppressants was that you wiped out _hard_ when you went off them. Not even turning them back on would help. What was left of Noah’s body would punish him for the missed sleep for the foreseeable future.

It was this full body shittiness that kept him from noticing the unfamiliar room for far too long. When it finally hit him he snapped upright and almost fell off the cot he was on. Again.

There was a mad scramble to get all his settings configured and parse out where he was. He turned his night vision on without thinking and almost burned his own retinas out. The suppressant headache was like a vice over his skull. Even opening his link to the Program felt abrasive, somehow.

By the looks of it he was in a storage closet. Boxes and alien looking equipment were packed on shelves to one side, and on the other there was Noah and his cot. He wasn't tied down, always a good sign, and the dim lightbulb that had almost scorched his eyeballs said his captors were considerate enough to not leave him in the dark. Outside he could hear two people shuffling around, one was talking lowly about something, the other was doing something with clicky metal.

It was only then that he remembered the events of the night before.

Actually, he realized as he checked the date on his internal clock, two nights before. He was asleep for nearly two whole days.

Fuck.

He pressed his fingers hard against his temples in a pitiful attempt to relieve his headache. Shame that his skull was still mostly human. And that was when he noticed that Tack must have fixed most of his other dents when he was asleep. Even the cut on his left arm was bandaged.

He swallowed. Patted himself down. Yeah, everything seemed to be in order. Except that his left hand was shaking again. Probably not because of the cybertoxin this time.

It was nice, he supposed. He wouldn't have to walk around looking like a car crash today. He just didn't like getting repairs while he was unconscious.

Like, he _really_ didn't like it.

Whatever. Didn't matter. He wasn’t dead. Hooray. Now he had to do damage control.

There was a frankly unnecessary number of unread messages from the rest of the team that he only had the energy to skim. Everyone had made it safely back to their base except for Noah himself. Good. He sent a quick message in the company group chat, _i'm alive, omw back,_ simply because he didn’t trust the Program to inform them, and then muted the thread against the barrage of messages that immediately poured in.

The Program was suspiciously silent. It knew he was back online, it was probably just waiting for the least convenient time possible to berate him.

And now he was going to have to face the people outside after breaking into their shop and passing out cold for 42 hours. Great. Cool.

He gave himself a few more seconds in the storage closet to prepare before he went out.

The first thing he saw was Min behind the checkout counter, staring slack jawed at him and loosely holding a phone. Like, a real physical cellphone. Noah hadn’t seen one of those in a while.

“I’ll call you back,” she murmured to the person on the other end, clicking it off. They stared at each other for a very long second.

"Morning?" Noah tried.

"Holy shit, we thought you were going to die,” she said.

Well, that was embarrassing.

“No we didn't.” Tack called from the back where Noah couldn’t see him. From the sound of it he was doing something mechanic-y, metal scraping against metal and an electronic whir. Maybe fixing a holo display? The frequency of the whir was right for it.

God, he had missed his enhanced hearing. Deadly cybertoxins really put things into perspective.

" _I_ thought you were going to die,” Min said.

Noah blinked at her. She was either genuinely concerned or very good at faking it. Either way it was weirding him out. "Sorry?"

Tack abandoned whatever he was doing and rounded the corner to level a very impressive glare at Noah. "Stop using sleep suppressants like that. Actually, just stop using them in general, they're fucking terrible for you."

“Right. Yeah.” Noah had no intention to do that and even less intention to argue with a guy he just met about it. He slouched over to the counter. "Uh, what do I owe you?"

"578.99, including the overnight stay and damage for the break-in,” Min said.

That was a surprisingly fair rate for such extensive repairs. Maybe he could stop paying Cash for his shitty chop shop mechanical services and just go here instead.

He couldn’t. The Program liked Cash for some reason. But it was a nice thought.

Even better, neither of them batted an eye when he dug some battered bills out from between the armor plates on his right shoulder and handed it over. Physical money wasn’t all that popular lately, like physical phones, only a few places still took it. But he liked to keep his money close and out of a machine that Sarah could hack. They didn't even talk much anymore, but he wouldn't put it past her to pull something just for shits and giggles.

“Do you need a receipt? We only do electronic ones.” Min said easily as she counted out his change.

It had been a long time since he’d done business with an establishment that cared about niceties like receipts, electronic or otherwise. He shook his head in mild shock.

That reminded him, he needed to tell Leighton to scrape records of his visit from Ridgeline Repairs’ servers.

For some reason he felt a little bad about that. He did worse things on a regular basis, but usually when he murdered someone or stole something from them they hadn’t saved his life just a few days before.

Well, there were the Project Nemesis scientists, but they didn’t count.

Min handed him his change and he shoved it back under his shoulder armor, eager to leave. “Uh, thanks for this. I’ll recommend you guys.”

“Don’t.” Tack said sharply. “I try to run an above the board operation here.”

That was probably fair. Noah shoved his hands in his pockets and marched to the door. With any luck he’d never see these people ever again.

"Hey, Leighton," Min said just as he reached for the doorknob.

All of a sudden he really regretted giving her a fake name.

He could just go. He _should_ just go. It didn't really matter if they knew each other or not, he had to get back to the base.

But he turned around, even forced a polite smile. "Yeah?"

She hesitated a second. In his robotically enhanced periphery Tack watched the two of them like a hawk. Finally, she drew in a breath and spoke. "I was in Project Nemesis. That’s where you know me.”

For a second he wondered if his balance was still fucked, because he could have sworn he fell straight through the floor. But he was still on solid ground. Still standing there dumbstruck, with Min staring expectantly and Tack scowling.

He was frozen. Tried to say something, but nothing came out. Stuck somewhere between “How?” and “Why the hell would you tell me that?”

He remembered her now. They never spoke, but he caught glimpses of her coming out of Lowell’s office or being escorted through the Project Nemesis complex sometimes. Little moments over ten years. Easy to forget, but also impossible to.

“Oh,” was all he managed to say after several embarrassing starts and stops.

“Yeah.”

Noah wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say to that. Melting into the floor to never be seen or heard from again sounded like the best option.

After a long moment of excruciating silence Min seemed to realize that the conversation was going nowhere. “How about I just,” she cut off, grabbed a pen from the cupholder next to her and rummaged around for a piece of paper. “I’ll just give you my number, if you want to talk.”

He didn’t, but that would save him from having to stay here. Min fumbled around a little more and huffed when she realized there was no paper to be found.

“Here,” Noah said, extending his left arm. See, organic limbs were good for something. Skin grafts tear too easily, and you can’t write on silicone.

Min hesitated a beat before writing her number down, handwriting sloppy on his skin. “I’ve met others, but they’re assholes.” she said, uncertainty creeping into her voice for the first time since he met her. “I dunno, might be nice to talk about it.”

Noah let out a strangled laugh that surprised both him and Min. “Same for the ones I know. Assholes.” After a beat he added, “I mean, you seem okay, though.”

She echoed his terrible thin laugh. “See you around?” she asked.

Oh, fuck no. “Maybe.”

She nodded resolutely as if he had made an important declaration.

Tack spoke up, catching Noah by surprise. He forgot he was still there. “Look, man, I have real clients who’ll be kinda freaked out to see you hanging around, so if you can get a move on.”

Noah didn’t need more encouragement. He nodded shortly, whipped around, and slammed out the door. Hopefully it didn’t look like fleeing, even though it absolutely was.

He glanced quickly over his shoulder as he powerwalked down the skywalk. They were both staring at him through the glass door.

Fucking hell.

He raked his hair back and picked up the pace as much as he could. Ridgeline was bustling now, the crowds hindered foot traffic speed was but made it easy to blend in, even with Noah’s dirty, blood-stained clothes. He tugged his sleeve down without daring to look at the number.

The Program’s message startled him so bad he almost jumped off the skywalk. _That was a very interesting development. I will conduct a more thorough investigation into Melinda Wilder, hold on contacting her until it is complete._

Noah swallowed. He assumed that was Min. It was a bad sign if it already had her full name. _Is she part of the plan, now?_

_Not yet. But I need to screen her for your safety._

He exhaled a shaky breath. Just a safety screening, then. The Program did that with half the people he met. He wasn’t sure why he was so relieved, he just met her and he probably wouldn’t call her even if the Program let him.

But there was a part of him that desperately wanted to keep Project Nemesis in the past.

 _Project Nemesis is not in the past. It is our future,_ the Program reminded him. He huffed. Once upon a time he would have eaten that kind of vague rhapsodizing bullshit up. Not anymore.

Sensing how unimpressed he was, it sent another message quickly. _But there has been a change. Chrysalis Co. knows more about revival technology than previously thought. An alliance is prudent._

He stopped in the middle of the skywalk. The guy behind him bumped into him, muttering curses, and several people gave him dirty looks for holding up traffic. He didn’t care. The plan _never_ changed like that. Guarding something, by nature, was a mostly static objective. _What?_

_The details are still being negotiated with Chrysalis Co. representatives, but as it stands this could be a significant boon. Return to the base for a full debrief._

Suddenly he was exhausted, even more than he was after the reboot, and he leaned on the perilously wobbly railing.

_Are you sure this is a good idea?_

_Yes_

Right. He wasn’t sure why he asked. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to fend off his gradually worsening headache.

It was right, of course. A corporate ally would get them places they couldn’t get alone. And this would mean he and Rose wouldn’t have to tear each other’s throats out on a monthly basis.

But there was something about it that turned his stomach. When the Program told him it wanted to safeguard revival technology, he didn’t imagine that would require corporate involvement. And he didn’t know how Chrysalis Co. even got the technology in the first place. As much as the Program insisted otherwise, Project Nemesis was supposed to be dead and gone.

The Program was always keeping things from him, he doubted even this debrief would answer any of his questions.

The ink on his arm itched, as if trying to remind him it was there.

He really hated his job.

**Author's Note:**

> if u can tell this is my first serious attempt at cyberpunk no u cant <3
> 
> i do have some vague plans to continue this but as youve probably noticed i write at the pace of a brick so this is marked as complete for the foreseeable future


End file.
